Good morning, Whitewater.

Whitewater’s Tuesday will be rainy with a high of fifty-five. Sunrise is 5:42 and sunset 8:00, for 14h 17m 34s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 98.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Alcohol Licensing Committee meets today at 6:15 PM, and Common Council at 6:30 PM.

Happy Cinco de Mayo, a day that not only commemorates a Mexican victory over France’s Napoleon III, but also a victory that likely aided the Union against the Confederacy:

Cinco de Mayo (Spanish for “fifth of May”) is a celebration held on May 5. It is celebrated in the United States^[1] and in Mexico, primarily in the state of Puebla,^{[note 1][2][3][4]} where the holiday is called El Día de la Batalla de Puebla(English: The Day of the Battle of Puebla).^[5][6][7] Mexican Americans also often see the day as a source of pride; one way they can honor their ethnicity is to celebrate this day.^[8]

The date is observed to commemorate the Mexican army‘s unlikely victory over French forces at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862, under the leadership of General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguín.^[3][9] In the United States, Cinco de Mayo is sometimes mistaken to be Mexico’s Independence Day—the most important national holiday in Mexico—which is celebrated on September 16.^[3][10]

….Donald W. Miles states, “At the time, there were fears in the United States that the French would use Mexico as a base to back the Confederacy, so President Lincoln and his Secretary of State went out of their way to appear ‘neutral’ in the Mexican situation. They did not want to take on the French and the Confederates at the same time”.^[30] Dr. Miles goes on to explain that “Napoleon III had hesitated to take on the United States directly, but now the news of the Civil War changed everything”.^[31] It meant that the Americans would be occupied with their Civil War for some time. Upon hearing the Spaniards and the British had sailed off to grab the customs house in Veracruz to start collecting their duties, Napoleon decided he would not only send the French navy, but would also start looking for someone to place as emperor in Mexico. He would then use Mexico as a base to help the Confederates win their war against the Union. Napoleon saw this as an opportunity not to be missed.^[31]

Historian Justo Sierra has written in his Political Evolution of the Mexican People, that had Mexico not defeated the French in Puebla on May 5, 1862, France would have gone to the aid of the Confederacy in the U.S. Civil War and the United States’ destiny would have been different.^[32][33]

Ignacio Gonzalez wrote, “Some scholars, including José Antonio Burciaga, believe that had the French defeated México at Puebla, France would have aided the South in the American Civil War in order to free Southern ports of the Union Blockade. During this time, Confederate General Robert E. Lee was enjoying success, and French intervention could have had an impact on the Civil War.”^[21]

Mexico and the United States are both better for Napoleon III’s defeat on 5.5.1862.

Here’s the second day of Puzzability‘s Maternity Test series:

This Week’s Game — May 4-8

Maternity Test

There’s a bit of a generation gap this Mother’s Day week. Each day’s clue is a series of words, each with one letter replaced by a dash. Fill in the missing letters to make a word—one way to get the first (or only) name of a famous mother, real or fictional, and another way to get the name of a child of hers.

Example:

SIDE-AR / BL-CKHEAD / A-OUND / O-LONG / -EARNING

Answer:

Carol & Bobby (Brady)

What to Submit:

Submit the two first names, with the mother first (as “Carol & Bobby” in the example), for your answer.

Tuesday, May 5

-UGFUL / OVERST-FFED / COMME-CE / HO-TED

Good morning, Whitewater.

Monday in town will be cloudy with a high of seventy-one. Sunrise today is 5:43 and sunset 7:59, for 14h 15m 10s of daytime. It’s a full moon today.

Google’s website commemorates the 360th birthday of Bartolomeo Cristofori, born this day on 1655 in Venice, and widely credited with inventing the piano:

The search engine Google is showing this interactive animated Doodle on May 4th, 2015 for celebrating 360th Birthday of Bartolomeo Cristofori.

Cristofori was an Italian musical instrument maker credited with inventing the piano. One of his biggest innovations was creating a hammer mechanism that struck the strings on a keyboard to create sound. The use of a hammer made it possible to produce softer or louder sounds depending upon how light or hard a player pressed on the keys.

Cristofori was born on May 4, 1655 in Padua in the Republic of Venice

The total number of pianos built by Cristofori is unknown. Only three survive today, all dating from the 1720s.

The piano as built by Cristofori in the 1720s boasted almost all of the features of the modern instrument. It differed in being of very light construction, lacking a metal frame; this meant that it could not produce an especially loud tone. This continued to be the rule for pianos until around 1820, when iron bracing was first introduced.
Read more about Piano at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano
Read more about Bartolomeo Cristofori at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartolom…
Read https://www.google.com/doodles/bartol… to know more about “who invented the Piano” Google Doodle.

On this day in 1873, Wisconsin Gov. John James Blaine is born:

On this date John James Blaine was born in the town of Wingville in Grant County. A politician, governor, and U.S. Senator, Blaine attended public schools in Montfort, and received a law degree from Northern Indiana University. He was admitted to the Wisconsin bar in 1897 and practiced briefly in Montfort before settling in Boscobel.

A Progressive Republican, he served as Boscobel’s mayor for four terms and was elected to the State Senate in 1909. It was there that he gained prominence by leading investigations into the campaign expenditures of Wisconsin Senator Isaac Stephenson, attempting to block Stephenson’s re-election. A zealous advocate of progressivism and the ideals embraced by Robert M. La Follette Sr., Blaine was one of the organizers and vice-president of the Wilson National Progressive Republican League. After running unsuccessfully for governor in 1914, Blaine was elected state attorney in 1918.

In 1921, he became governor and held this office for three consecutive terms. During his tenure Blaine promoted progressive labor legislation, fostered a campaign to eradicate bovine tuberculosis, and signed the nation’s first law giving equal rights to women. In 1926, he won the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate where he served from 1927 to 1933, becoming one of the leaders in the effort to repeal prohibition. He died on April 16, 1934. [Source: Dictionary of Wisconsin Biography, SHSW 1960, pg. 39]

Puzzability has a new weekly series beginning today, entitled, Maternity Test:

This Week’s Game — May 4-8

Maternity Test

There’s a bit of a generation gap this Mother’s Day week. Each day’s clue is a series of words, each with one letter replaced by a dash. Fill in the missing letters to make a word—one way to get the first (or only) name of a famous mother, real or fictional, and another way to get the name of a child of hers.

Example:

SIDE-AR / BL-CKHEAD / A-OUND / O-LONG / -EARNING

Answer:

Carol & Bobby (Brady)

What to Submit:

Submit the two first names, with the mother first (as “Carol & Bobby” in the example), for your answer.

Monday, May 4

-AWBREAKER / CONSTR-CTION / DOWNSI-E / M-STERY

Good morning, Whitewater.

Sunday in town will be partly sunny, with a high of eighty. There’s a one-in-five chance of morning showers. Sunrise is 5:54 and sunset 7:58, for 14h 12m 44s of daytime. We have a full moon today.

Friday’s FW poll asked whether Molly Schuyler’s scarfing of three steak dinners in twenty minutes, as part of a food-eating contest, was an example of vile gluttony or valiant competition. A clear majority of respondents, 73.68%, labeled Ms. Schuyler’s efforts vile gluttony.

On this day in 1952, Lt. Col. Joseph Fletcher does something no one had, indisputably, ever done before:

A ski-modified U.S. Air Force C-47 piloted by Lieutenant Colonel Joseph O. Fletcher of Oklahoma and Lieutenant Colonel William P. Benedict of California becomes the first aircraft to land on the North Pole. A moment later, Fletcher climbed out of the plane and walked to the exact geographic North Pole, probably the first person in history to do so.

In the early 20th century, American explorers Robert Peary and Dr. Frederick Cook, both claiming to have separately reached the North Pole by land, publicly disputed each other’s claims. In 1911, Congress formally recognized Peary’s claim. In recent years, further studies of the conflicting claims suggest that neither expedition reached the exact North Pole, but that Peary came far closer, falling perhaps 30 miles short. In 1952, Lieutenant Colonel Fletcher was the first person to undisputedly stand on the North Pole. Standing alongside Fletcher on the top of the world was Dr. Albert P. Crary, a scientist who in 1961 traveled to the South Pole by motorized vehicle, becoming the first person in history to have stood on both poles.

Good morning, Whitewater.

The National Weather Service reports that Saturday in town will be a decreasingly cloudy day, but one could almost as well say an increasingly sunny one. We’ll have a high of about seventy-six. Sunrise is 5:46 and sunset is 7:56, for 14h 10m 17s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 97.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

Are all movie trailers really the same? The publisher of Red Letter Media thinks so:

On this day in 2011, bin Laden meets his fate:

Osama bin Laden, the founder and head of the Islamist militant group al-Qaeda, was killed in Pakistan on May 2, 2011, shortly after 1:00 am PKT^[1][2] (20:00 UTC, May 1) by United States Navy SEALs of the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Development Group (also known as DEVGRU or SEAL Team Six). The operation, code-named Operation Neptune Spear, was carried out in a Central Intelligence Agency-led operation. In addition to DEVGRU, participating units included the U.S. Army Special Operations Command‘s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne) and CIA operatives.^[3][4] The raid on bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, was launched fromAfghanistan.^[5] After the raid, U.S. forces took bin Laden’s body to Afghanistan for identification, then buried it at sea within 24 hours of his death, in accordance with Islamic tradition.^[6] The United States had direct evidence that Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, knew of bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad, Pakistan.^[7]

Good morning, Whitewater.

Whitewater’s Friday will be sunny with a high of sixty-nine. Sunrise is 5:47 and sunset 7:45, for 14h 07m 49s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 93.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

On 5.1.1931, Pres. Hoover dedicates the Empire State Building:

On this day in 1931, President Herbert Hoover officially dedicates New York City’s Empire State Building, pressing a button from the White House that turns on the building’s lights. Hoover’s gesture, of course, was symbolic; while the president remained in Washington, D.C., someone else flicked the switches in New York.

At the time of its completion, the Empire State Building, at 102 stories and 1,250 feet high (1,454 feet to the top of the lightning rod), was the world’s tallest skyscraper. The Depression-era construction employed as many as 3,400 workers on any single day, most of whom received an excellent pay rate, especially given the economic conditions of the time. The new building imbued New York City with a deep sense of pride, desperately needed in the depths of the Great Depression, when many city residents were unemployed and prospects looked bleak. The grip of the Depression on New York’s economy was still evident a year later, however, when only 25 percent of the Empire State’s offices had been rented.

It’s the birthday of a noted Wisconsin academic:

On this date John Bascom was born in Genoa, New York. A noted educator, university president, and author, Bascom received his B.A. (1848) and M.A. (1852) from Williams College in Massachusetts. In 1855, he entered the Andover Theological Seminary in Massachusetts. He was appointed president of the University of Wisconsin in 1874. A leader in college education, he devoted his career to improving university standards by encouraging improved high school instruction. Bascom also advocated co-educational instruction, a rarity in the 19th century. During his tenure as president, the first Agricultural Experimental Station and the School of Pharmacy were created, and new buildings such as the Washburn Observatory, Old Science Hall, the Library, and Assembly Hall were built. Bascom was a strong supporter of women’s rights, was a leader in the Prohibition party, and advocated the right of workers to join trade unions and strike for decent wages. He resigned from his university presidency in 1887 and returned to Williams College to lecture in sociology and political science. John Bascom died on October 2, 1911. [Source: Dictionary of Wisconsin Biography, pg. 29]

Here’s the final game in this week’s Puzzability series, Giving Away the Ending:

This Week’s Game — April 27-May 1

Giving Away the Ending

You’ll need to do a little detective work this week. For each day, we started with the title of a well-known mystery book and replaced all the letters in each word—except the last letter—with asterisks.

Example:

A  ****Y  *N  ******T

Answer:

A Study in Scarlet

What to Submit:

Submit the book title (as “A Study in Scarlet” in the example) for your answer.

Friday, May 1

A  *S  **R  ****I